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Science Budget

I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) and to accept his invitation to be radical. We have heard some criticisms of the STFC, but many other aspects of the science budget need to be tackled in the debate. I do not get heavily stimulated by talking about budgets—I find it rather boring. Having run a department, in which I had a few million pounds to budget, I was quite creative, but I think that I got out just in time. Scrutinising the research councils is very much part of a Select Committee's work. It takes me back to the time when we scrutinised the Medical Research Council, which is now extolled for its work. However, I remember that our Committee's report was much more vehement than the report about the STFC. It created a hum in the community, but in the case of both research councils, the hum came from the grass roots. Those who are conducting the research and doing the work feel that something is not right. They suddenly find a way through the parliamentary scrutiny system to get to a Department with which they find it difficult to engage. It is not always the fault of Departments or Select Committees that we have not picked up on the problem. Scientists are not great communicators in the political process and we must tackle the issue of getting our young people who are coming through the system to realise where the money comes from. I hold my hand up and admit that too many scientists and technologists believe that the world owes them a living and that, if they come up with a smart idea, it will immediately be funded. Things have never been like that and, in my opinion, never should be. One has to make the case, justify what one is doing and show what benefit it gives the world, whether it is blue-skies research or research into a product. I left research partly because we were having to get rid of people, and employ people on one-year, six-month and one-month contracts in awful laboratories. It was therefore inspiring to hear in the Chamber in 1998 that Government money, alongside Wellcome Trust money, was being invested in refurbishing laboratories, which were dripping with damp. Every university now has a good laboratory. I believe that that has stimulated many young people to come into research—perhaps not enough, but at least something has started to happen. I introduced a ten-minute Bill, which I discussed with Lord Sainsbury, and said that we must double the science budget. Blow me, we doubled it—I should have asked for it to have been quadrupled. I made a dreadful mistake. I remember the conservatism among the scientific community, which thought that the measure was only a crazy ten-minute Bill. We knew that things could change and they did. That continues and we need further resources, as we have heard all evening. Much of the science around us has resulted in great health benefits to people in this country. My speciality is cancer, but I am interested in health generally. The bucket loads of money that we have given to cancer were driven by the research knowledge that emanated from scientists and medics in this country as well as in the United States. The discovery of oncogenes stimulated a field of cancer research, on which the Government picked up. They doubled the budget for research and treatment. We now have cancer plan 2, and we have realised that there is a journey to take on palliative care, on which there is further research to be done and clinical trials to undertake. The trials must not take place abroad—we should carry them out on our patients here because patients in a clinical trial generally do better and we get more information. We need more nurses to help get patients into clinical trials and so on. That is beginning to happen. Under the aegis of the cancer tsar, Mike Richards, there is great drive. Science, medicine and evidence underwrite all that continuing work. Today, there was a meeting in this place for ethnic minority groups from different communities, mainly in London. It has been realised that the cancer rates in different sub-populations—major populations in parts of the country—are different. Ten years ago, none of us realised that that was a problem. Now that we do, medical understanding is excellent. Women with breast cancers from Indian communities in the east end of London have a different culture and different problems in entering the national health service. We suddenly woke up to that and we are doing something about it. New procedures emerged from the Darzi report last week for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to make drugs and technologies available throughout the country. Primary care trusts now have to justify why somebody is not an exceptional case. If there is an exceptional case, everybody in the country who is in the same category must get the exceptional treatment. That is a major step forward, which I hope will get rid of the postcode lottery. We are therefore learning. Sometimes there is a lack of political drive in this country and from the Government to make things happen even faster. For example, we often cut research. I am especially interested in honey bees. Hon. Members may not be excited about that, but honey bee research has suddenly captured the imagination. A friend of mine said that it was the only subject discussed in a general committee meeting of the Labour party on the Isle of Arran. I understand that there are problems in Scotland, but honey bee research is an amazing field. Yet what do we do in this country? We sack the people who are conducting the research at Rothamsted. What did we do about BSE? We cut the research into BSE just before it happened. The previous Government cut the money for wave energy research, but now it is a fashionable subject for research, which provides great stimulation and experience. We were good at cutting money for research. We had an amateur approach of saying, ““Well it's not very important at the minute, so we'll cut the research.”” That has gone. We must do more on dementia and Alzheimer's, as well as myalgic encephalomyelitis. Rare cancers—pancreatic, liver and kidney—do not get the same services as breast cancer and so on. There is therefore a good reason for believing that we have a big research future that will need much more money. It has also been said that commercial influence has been brought to bear on research in our universities and institutions. Research from this country and the United States led to the internet. Basic research led to it and its exploitation. There would be no silicon valley in California without that basic research. I could cite case after case—for example, DNA, a small short note in nature, which revolutionised the world. We should protect that basic understanding. Research councils need to be examined, and Select Committees should scrutinise them. They also need to think about how they can join together. For example, I know people who worked on atmospheric chemistry in three different departments, but they never spoke to each other. The previous speaker mentioned the fact that we have to get people in cross-cutting areas. The people who drink coffee together work together; the people who drink together get things done. That is my motto. People must work and discuss their problems with each other over the odd pint or half pint, depending on one's taste. Some research councils also have too many establishment figures making the noises. It is easy for that to happen in Britain. What is wrong with having good graduate students or members of the public on those councils, to listen and talk about the issues? I think I know why. When we put the public on to certain committees, such as on genetic modification, and when we had those juries, they have embarrassed a lot of the scientists by asking, for instance, ““What does that mean?””, ““How does that happen?”” and so on. The public ask for the basic information, which is very important in science. Research councils have a heck of a lot to learn. Last Monday, we discussed food scarcity in this place and we talked about plant genetics, or at least I did. The development of different breeding programmes—not necessarily genetically modified, but different programmes, involving different types of wheat and maize, for example—could lead to plants that can withstand drought and live in inclement parts of the world. Plant genetics gets a rum deal in this country, in terms of medical science and medical experiments.